First I punched a tree. Then I built a bench. Then I clubbed a Pal to death with a hand-made weapon to take its wool, spun that wool into clothing, and at some point along the way I forgot to notice that I was being taught a survival game.
That’s the sleight of hand. The genre has been enormously popular for years now, and every entry I’d picked up had bounced right off me. I’d dip in, prod at it to figure out what everyone sees in it, and a few hours later find myself buried under one thinly explained system after another with no idea what my actual goal was. Then I’d quietly drift away.
The onboarding is the whole story
With 1.0 landing to glowing reviews, I decided the genre had earned one more attempt from me. Waiting for this particular version turned out to be lucky, since by all accounts the game asked far more of newcomers back at launch.
Newcomers are now handed a run of missions designed to march them through the game’s many overlapping systems. Wood turns into a crafting bench. A club turns into wool (it is, after all, a dog-eat-dog world). Wool turns into clothes. After that comes a camp, then a house, then a teleporter, and before you’ve registered it you’re venturing further out than you’d planned.
Spelled out like that, none of it reads as groundbreaking. It isn’t. But the rhythm of it is what kept me sitting there, and I’d never pushed deep enough into a survival game to feel that click happen.
Then you’re gliding off cliffs
It doesn’t take long before you’re flinging yourself off ledges in true Zelda fashion, thumping every Pal you spot to trap them in spheres and put them on the payroll. Station them around camp. Ride them. Take them with you to brawl with the big roaming Pals and the enormous bosses.
It’s a blast. And to be perfectly clear: none of that would have held me if the game hadn’t walked me through the systems that keep it all running.
I’m still not strong enough to win
There’s plenty of road ahead of me. I was nowhere near strong enough to bring down the first boss on my own, and I was well aware of it.
What those opening missions handed me instead was a grasp of everything else worth doing while I grind my way toward being an actual threat. A huge world is still waiting to be explored, there are Pals to catch, and there’s a base to expand. I’m having a blast with all of it.
Where to get it
Palworld 1.0 is out on Steam, Xbox and PS5. The price is $29.99.
Tonight I’m heading back in to lose to that boss all over again.